The Young Explorer eBook

Of course, this was the reasonable view of the matter;
but there were some who sided with the Irishman, among
others the Kentuckian, and he volunteered to go as
a committee of one to Dewey, and represent to him
the sentiments of the camp.

Accordingly he walked over to where Dewey and his
apprentice were working.

“Look here, Dewey,” he began, “me
and some of the rest of the boys have takin’
over this yere matter of your givin’ work to
this Chinaman, and we don’t like it.”

“Why not?” asked Dewey coolly.

“We don’t feel no call to associate with
sich as he.”

“You needn’t; I don’t ask you to,”
said Dewey quietly. “I am the only one
who associates with him.”

“But we don’t want him in camp.”

“He won’t trouble any of you. I will
take charge of him.”

“Look here, Dewey, you’ve got to respect
public sentiment, and public sentiment is agin’
this thing.”

“Whose public sentiment—­O’Reilly’s?”

“Well, O’Reilly don’t like it, for
one.”

“I thought so.”

“Nor I for another.”

“It strikes me, Hodgson, that I’ve got
some rights as well as O’Reilly. Suppose
I should say I didn’t choose to work in the same
camp with an Irishman?”

“That’s different.”

“Why is it different?”

“Well, you see, an Irishman isn’t a yeller
heathen.”

Dewey laughed.

“He may be a heathen, though not a yellow one,”
he said.

“Well, Dewey, what answer shall I take back
to the boys?”

“You can say that I never intended to employ
the Chinaman for any length of time; but I shall not
send him off till I get ready.”

“I’m afraid the boys won’t like
it, Dewey.”

“Probably O’Reilly won’t. As
for you, you are too intelligent a man to be influenced
by such a man as he.”

All men are sensible to flattery, and Hodgson was
won over by this politic speech.

Hodgson returning reported that Dewey would soon dismiss
the Chinaman, and omitted the independent tone which
the latter had assumed. The message was considered
conciliatory, and pronounced satisfactory; but O’Reilly
was not appeased. He still murmured, but his
words produced little effect. Seeing this, he
devised a private scheme of annoyance.

CHAPTER XXX.

A midnightvisit.

This conversation set Dewey to thinking. Though
he was independent, he was not foolishly so, and he
was not willing, out of a spirit of opposition, to
expose his new acquaintance to annoyance, perhaps to
injury. He did not care to retain Ki Sing in his
employment for any length of time, and made up his
mind to dismiss him early the next mornng, say, at
four o’clock, before the miners had thrown off
the chains of sleep.